Decent Computer - for £250

Hi, it's my birthday at the beginning of May (8th), and I expect to get roughly £250 or $500. I was wondering if anyone knows of any what-you-would-call good deals on a computer. However, if you do find any, it would be preferrable they were located in the UK (so no shipping), if they are in the US, for example, remember shipping to the UK. Anyway, I want as a minimum of Dual Core Proccessor (2 giga hertz) 150GB/160GB HD 1GB Ram XP/Vista or no Operating system and a decent graphics card that will play most games Obviously these are minimum, so anything better let me know. If you would prefer, send me an IM. If there is anything in the min. requirements list you feel i missed which are important, please let me know. Also plenty of room for PCI, Ramsticks Hard-drives would be nice. Thanks to anyone who responds.

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Whoah! When buying a PC there is a LOT to think about... I'm gonna try and help you with it now

Future Proofing: you're not going to want a PC that becomes obselete in a month or so, which is why you've got to make sure when you buy a computer that you can upgrade the parts in it so that it's compliant with all the common standards, has all the right ports, supports the graphics cards needed for future game etc.
For instance, look at the specs of my MacBook Pro:
-Intel T7800 processor (dual core at 2.6GHz)
-200GB hard drive at 7200 rpm
-4GB RAM at 667MHz
-GeForce 8600M GT grahics with 256MB VRAM
-1920x1200 screen

This is all I'm going to need for a long time. I have a fast enough processor and enough RAM that my laptop will be considered powerful for quite a bit of time to come, although this power comes at a price. The graphics I have are enough for what I use, they're fit for purpose, all I do is play small games now and again, edit photos, browse the web and play media, which it can handle with ease. I have a big enough hard drive to store all my files and media etc. And if I need extra space, I will invest in external storage. Either an external hard drive or networked storage will do.
You get the idea of future proofing now...

Value for Money: Obviously you'll want something that's good value for money. I suggest you buy your PC off of Dell. The reason they're cheaper is that they don't have any stores, so they don't have to pay rent for the location, wages for shop staff etc. and they offer good deal. I, personally, have bought a PC from Dell, and a few accessories, and have been happy with what I have purchased.
Something you'll want to think about is that the further in to the future you go, the better the PC you get for your money, so maybe you should decide exactly what PC to get closer to when you're your getting your money.


Operating System: Choosing what operating system you use is important as well. Personally, I despise Vista. It takes up way too much system resources, is confusing, has a very bloated GUI and is just generally annoying to me. You may have a different experience of it. It does have good multimedia capabilities, and the most important thing of all about it... DirectX 10.
A lot of games in the future are going to require this, and it's only on Vista. I used to use XP Pro and liked it, it had it's flaws... but it worked (for the most part). Now I use Mac OS X and it's just fantastic. It's quick and responsive, it looks good, it's functional and everything works like it's supposed to. Of course, Apple hardware comes at it's price... which, incidentally, is quite high.
Also, running Vista with 1GB RAM wouldn't be too fast.


What I would do: I have good hardware skills and have built many a computer, for gaming, networked storage, local media server, web server, ftp server and across many OSs (Windows 2000, XP, Vista and many Linux distributions), so what I would do is buy all the parts needed and assemble them myself. Or, if I'm feeling lazy, I'd buy a barebones system (a system with all the basics like case, motherboard, power supply etc. You buy the processor, RAM and hard drives seperately).

Whatever you do, good luck
What I recommend is that you check the Dell website for good deals on PCs near to your specs nearer the time you expect your money.

Anyone care to add anything else to that?

 

 

 

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I too assemble my PC myself & so it costs me very cheap. Anyways u can check DELL site for any deals. And I guess you can get a better configuration that you listed above for $500.

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thx for the advice Keri-j but I'm not too fussed about that I understand good value for money. Some of thats I will use. All I want is something that will work for me. It doesn't have to be in date it has to work. The only other thing is it needs to be upgradeable which is something I've loosely put. But yeah. I want something that will play current games. You heard of Spore? I want too play games like real time stratergies not shooters etc.

Plus for the record I hate macs I hate their system. (in my opinion) and when I say hate I mean I don't like them

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$500 is not a lot to play with.

Spore looks like a game that will be needing a fair mainstream video card to enjoy its BASIC graphical offerings, but you'll need to look for upgrading potential if you want to play the game as it was meant to be played. Thus, your desire for upgradability. Of course, any geek will point you to building your own machine, and that's where I will point you to too.

I suggest that you take a look into designing your own PC from scratch. I'm not sure what they offer for the UK, but in the US NewEgg is the website of choice when it comes to getting PC components for the best price possible, with Pricewatch being a good computer product search engine. Some things to note when it comes to the typical components that you should be looking at:

Case

A case will be your pride and joy or just the hull that will enclose your system. It doesn't need to be pretty, but if it does, expect to pay more for eye candy. You can get a case as cheap as $20. Remember that there are different form factors too, so figure out whether you want a full tower or even a flatbed.

Cooling

You won't really need to worry about cooling if your case already comes with fans. In the case that it doesn't, fans are a cheap way to do it. Passive cooling may cut it if you don't have many performance components in the system, so if you're willing to push it, you might want to consider purchasing cooling solutions.

Motherboard

Here's an important piece. Don't overlook futureproofing by limiting yourself to a less-than-desirable board. Some boards come with onboard graphics and audio; you can save money by opting for these solutions, but you won't get as much performance as you would out of a dedicated card. Make sure that the motherboard you choose is compatible with the processor you get, not to mention have types of slots available for your other components. Try $100.

Processor

Make sure this piece is compatible with your motherboard. Most processor choices in the dual-core category will be enough, if not more, to fit your needs, but the better it is, the more of an impact on your wallet it will be. Expect $150-200.

RAM

1GB of RAM will suffice for basic things... but I would push it to 2GB just for worry-free productivity and gaming. Anything beyond that is rather overkill (unless you like to do programming and/or design CADs... which eat up memory). I'd call this about $100 for 2GB.

Hard Drive

Hard drives are rather cheap nowadays. For almost an equivalent of a dollar a GB, you can probably look to spend $150-$200 here.

Optical Drive

They're cheaper than ever. $50 will land you a combination DVD/CD rewritable, unless you really want to skimp and get a $20 CD-ROM drive.

Graphics Card

Here's one of the most frequently-debatable and upgraded components... and of course, potentially the most expensive. If you want to play games, I would suggest getting a dedicated video card. With games nowadays, you shouldn't go for less than 256MB of VRAM... and it's a whole different ballgame when it comes to shopping for video cards. If you want to build your own PC, I'll go into more detail as to what you should look for in a video card. This can cost you anywhere from $75 to $500 or even more.

Sound Card

You can skimp on this if you've got onboard audio on your motherboard unless you want crystal-clear clarity and sound processing from a dedicated card. Then again, onboard audio has been getting much better these days.

Monitor

Now that you've already shelled out all that cash for the CPU, you now have to shell a possible $100-$300 for a monitor.

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Like I said, $500 isn't much to play with. You can get a prefabricated desktop for about that much that does the basic stuff without a hiccup, but another approach is to buy something like an HP for $500, then upgrade some components later down the road.

I recommend getting a Hewlett Packard or a Dell, although HP will provide more elbow room as opposed to Dell's dummy-proof, buy-and-keep-as-is approach.

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If you can do online shopping, I'd suggest going to TigerDirect to look for a bundle. Their computers are pretty cheap, if only refurbished.

The computer I have now cost $549 (currently about £275) plus tax on a Midnight Madness event (it's $609 without the discount). Here are the specs:

Manufacturer: Gateway
Motherboard: ?!? (I have no idea where to check for this information.)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3.0 Ghz, 2 cores)
Hard drive: 500GB SCSI drive (Something about "WDC WDMA 00AAKS-00TMA".)
RAM: 2046 MB (1.99 GB, close enough to 2)
OS included: Vista ()
Graphics card: nVIDIA GeForce 8500GT, 256 MB, which is pretty much enough to play games with.

It pretty much meets all your requirements. Now the only thing is to try to find one like it. With shipping, i'd say it's about $650 (£325) total.

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Download CPU-Z and you'll see

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Computer from dumpster, street and garage sales
Decent Computer

My dad always buys me used computer from the garage sale, since may 2007. He buys it whether it's old, new, broken, etc. Anyways, If I got enough parts that was manufactured like year 1997 or later. I can reconstruct a new pc and run vista on it.

-reply by Manley

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